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9780333801581

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'...the first complete analysis of the successes and failures of the Italian Antimafia.' - Crime and Justice International '...a hallmark since it uses primary sources, the latest data and interviews with senior judges, politicians, police officers and relatives of mafia victims, including the courageous women of the grassroots antimafia movement.' - Don DeNevi, Palo Alto Daily News 'Jamieson's book is the best available general account of the contemporary Mafia and Italian organized crime; it is well argued and documented, and terrifying by implication...together with Alexander Stille's Excellent Cadavers and Patrick McCarthy's Crisis of the Italian State, it is one of the best recent books on contemporary Italy.' - Robert Fox, Times Literary Supplement

A consultant to the United Nations International Drug Control Programme provides penetrating analysis of Italy's century-old struggle against the Mafia, a struggle that reached new heights in 1992 with the assassination of two prominent judges. Jamieson, who has written on terrorism, organized crime, and drugs in both Italian and English journals, has done her research. She interviewed prosecutors, judges, politicians, priests, police officers, and widows of Mafia victims; she examined newspaper coverage, government documents, and court records; she put together chronologies and compiled statistics. From these sources she has constructed a narrative that takes a hard look at the successes and failures of the current antimafia movement. After a brief history of Mafia/government interaction, Jamieson studies four areas of antimafia activity: political, law enforcement, civic or grassroots, and international. Her primary focus is on the political response, since it is central to the other efforts. Jamieson finds that conflicts between the judiciary and the executive have led to stop-gap measures rather than a concerted effort to adopt positive policies aimed at neutralizing the Mafia's threat. She considers the problems and assesses the effectiveness of such law-enforcement institutions as the police, the army, the intelligence agencies, and the witness protection program; she also takes a critical look at the laudable but limited responses of various other sectors of Italian society, including women's groups, the Catholic Church, civic organizations, and schools. Italy, Jamieson says, `stands at a crossroad in the antimafia fight`; which road it will take is still unclear. International efforts to fight the Mafia in such areas as drug and arms trafficking, fraud, money laundering, and extortion have also increased since 1992, but the author notes the slowness with which international and domestic bureaucracies move compared with the speed of organized crime. Her conclusion: organized crime, which now reaches every continent as well as cyberspace, is likely to continue to expand. A troubling but hard-to-dispute assessment backed by an impressive amount of data. (Kirkus Reviews)

'...the first complete analysis of the successes and failures of the Italian Antimafia.' - Crime and Justice International '...a hallmark since it uses primary sources, the latest data and interviews with senior judges, politicians, police officers and relatives of mafia victims, including the courageous women of the grassroots antimafia movement.' - Don DeNevi, Palo Alto Daily News 'Jamieson's book is the best available general account of the contemporary Mafia and Italian organized crime; it is well argued and documented, and terrifying by implication...together with Alexander Stille's Excellent Cadavers and Patrick McCarthy's Crisis of the Italian State, it is one of the best recent books on contemporary Italy.' - Robert Fox, Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

ALISON JAMIESON is a freelance author and consultant who has written extensively in English and Italian on issues of political violence, organised crime and drugs. She was born and educated in Scotland but began her career in London, where she worked as a security consultant. She moved to Italy in 1984. Her books include The Heart Attacked: Terrorism and Conflict in the Italian State, and Terrorism and Drug Trafficking in the 1990s. She has published widely in UK and US journals. From 1992 to 1997 she was a regular guest lecturer at the NATO Defence College in Rome.

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